Prime Minister Theresa May is a tough cookie, and her Conservative Party is the closest friend Republicans have outside our borders in this world.  The Brexit Vote last year was a thunderous expression of English nationalism that may, in time, lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom, but with no great loss if that happens.

Bismarck noted that the most important fact of the nineteenth century was that the British and the Americans spoke the same language.  Three quarters of Canada speaks that same uniquely expressive language, and Australia does as well.  Three of those four nations – America, Britain and Australia – now have heads of government from their respective conservative political parties.

The potential impact of America and Britain – the largest and the fifth largest economies in the world – acting in concert is hard to overstate.  Canada is the tenth largest economy in the world, and Australia is the thirteenth largest.  Combined, these economies have one third of the global GDP and more than twice that of China, the second largest economy in the world. 

The world knows that the English-speaking democracies can have and have had united purpose in the past.  During the Second World War, before America was formally in that conflict, the special relationship between Britain and America – combined with the special relationship between Churchill and FDR – led to America entering the war in everything but name before Hitler declared war on America after Pearl Harbor.

Likewise, the extended special relationship between the historic English-speaking democracies had brought Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa into the Second World War almost as soon as it began, and these Dominion democracies provided indispensable fighting men and fighter pilots, which kept Britain in the grim days after France fell.

America, Britain, Canada, and Australia have close and natural ties beyond the vitally important common language.  All have been strongly philo-Semitic.  In a world that today finds copies of odious and old defamations of Jews, this matters.  Few things could help Israel more than a stronger and more cohesive collaboration of the English-speaking democracies. 

All have rejected socialism, even as all have embraced elements of the welfare state.  Communist parties in France and Italy as well as the whole Third World were long competitive in national elections.  Those parties never won more than a micron of support in elections in those English-speaking democracies.  Adam Smith wrote his famous defense of economic liberty in Britain during the same year that our Founding Fathers were signing our Declaration of Independence.  The idea of liberty and individual rights is stronger in America and Britain than anywhere in the rest of the world.

The insular nature of these democracies – Mexico is virtually the only nation outside this group that has a land border with any of the others – also provides a natural protection against invasions of any sort, provided that these nations have tough political leaders and use the tools they have.  The sea is a passive wall, but a potent one. 

All this means that a truly great and transformative partnership is possible and that the level of trust between London and Washington, as well as the British and American peoples, through two hot world wars and one cold world war has the potential to bring reluctant powers to our side and to paint our sworn enemies into a corner.  As Prime Minister May noted, the British have been fighting beside us for more than a decade (along with the Canadians and Australians) and form an irresistible military force.

It also opens up the possibility of a common trade zone of the English-speaking democracies – and this is something wise to at least consider – which would include a highly educated and affluent population speaking the same language and having the same values, with economic size vastly greater than any potential combination of other nations, a group of nations also producing food, energy, and related raw materials in abundance.

The key, of course, is leadership.  FDR and Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher – that is what matters most.  It is unthinkable that Obama would have made common cause with May to defend Western civilization any more than Carter, when Thatcher was prime minister, established the same robust partnership that began, almost at once, when Reagan took office.

Are "May and Trump" another "Thatcher and Reagan"?  It will be a good thing for peace, for prosperity, and for liberty if so.